124 GOURMET TRAVELLER
“And people are starting to realise that buying less
and buying better is the way to go. A good tweed
jacket will last a lifetime.”
His point is well made at The Bow Bar, across
the street from Walker Slater, where I shelter during
a shower. “There’s no music, no TV, and just a pie
on the menu,“ says Hall. “What they do is serve good
cask ales and 300 whiskies, and they really know what
they’re talking about.”
It’s raining again on the way to the airport the
next day. But the glass is half-full for Paul, the
Glaswegian driver. “There’s a saying in these parts,”
he shouts cheerfully above the downpour. “Today’s
rain is tomorrow’s whisky.”
The island of Islay is famously damp, and all
that shite weather, as well as generations of distilling
skill and acres of peat create the alchemy that is Islay
whisky. The defining characteristic of its prized single
malts is peaty smoke – subtle when wrapped around
dried fruit and leather flavours in a 15-year-old
Bowmore; strident (or “brutal” was one barman’s
description to me) in a slug of Laphroaig 10. Peat
banks are everywhere – 12,000 years in the making,
cut neatly across sodden fields. With no coal and few
trees, peat is the island’s traditional fuel. It burns
smokily – the tarry smell is on the wind as we approach
the malting silos at Port Ellen – and for centuries
it’s been used to dry the barley that makes whisky,
imparting the unmistakable nose and flavour of Islay.
Peter the barman surveys 600 whiskies behind
the bar at the Bowmore Hotel. His collection runs
to 1,500 bottles, “and I’m always picking up more”,
he says. With AC/DC on the jukebox and a bristling
dartboard in the corner, it’s a no-nonsense introduction
to Islay’s finest. He pours me an unpeated 12-year-old
from Bunnahabhain, to prove the point that Islay is
more than smoke and mirrors. And then a Lagavulin
16: robust, complex – and very peaty.
It’s not as peaty, though, as Bruichladdich’s
off-the-scale, experimental Octomore range. A little
before 10 o’clock next morning I’m waiting with
a crowd of whisky lovers outside the harbourfront
distillery. Bruichladdich’s is one of eight on the
island, and like all the old ones it’s whitewashed and
foursquare, built to weather storm and tempest. The
cellar door opens, and a group of Swedish firefighters
and several long-distance cyclists waste no time
clamouring for a splash of Octomore. “You don’t want
to start with something a bit less... robust?” inquires
the chap behind the bar, gesturing at Bruichladdich’s
full range of single malts, spanning an eponymous
unpeated collection, the heavily peated Port Charlotte
range, an island-foraged gin called The Botanist,
and the bold “super heavily peated” Octomore.
Named for a nearby farm that supplies
Bruichladdich’s spring water, Octomore bears